Our good friends from Wild Steelheaders United have been putting out some seriously informative content of late as part of their ‘Science Friday‘ series of posts, where each Friday they share the latest in steelhead science.

As part of TU’s ‘Wild Steelhead Initiative,’ Wild Steelheaders United’s mission statement is beautifully simple – to educate steelhead anglers of all backgrounds, whether they fish with gear or fly, bait or lure, to promote what we all want in the long run.. Healthier steelhead populations!

Having learned a lot from their posts, we asked them to put together a write up for our humble little blog to address a question we get asked all the time, why all the hype over wild and hatchery steelhead? They obliged, and today we share their words with you!

Thanks guys!

Understanding Steelhead Hatcheries

One of the main tenets at Wild Steelheaders United is that well informed anglers are better advocates for wild steelhead. Consequently, we spend quite a bit of time discussing the science of steelhead biology and ecology, both internally and with the broader community of steelheaders.

Steelhead are remarkably diverse in their behavior and life histories, and while that is cool in and of itself it also means there is a large amount of information for any one person to absorb and understand if they want to be well versed in steelhead knowledge. The fact that the field of steelhead science is continually evolving as new research is published and older studies are rediscovered makes the challenge of staying well informed on all things steelhead even greater.

Wild Steelheaders United has made a concerted effort to “spread the gospel” about steelhead science. One facet of this effort is our “Science Friday” series. These write-ups are posted every Friday on our blog and shared through Facebook and Instagram. They are short, easy to understand, and run the gamut from quick reviews of recent or important research papers to defining terminology to overviews of methods fisheries managers use to make decisions about managing steelhead populations. Check out our Science Friday series and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with the latest news and analysis of wild steelhead science.

One topic that always evokes a variety of opinions from steelhead anglers is hatcheries. While deciphering the jargon associated with hatcheries and their operation can be difficult, this week’s Science Friday focused on terminology that is more common-place and is used to broadly classify hatchery programs: segregated and integrated.

A segregated hatchery program is one in which only hatchery steelhead are collected and used to produce smolts. Because the broodstock are limited to hatchery fish, there can be a number of changes in the population over time, such as differences in run timing and size. Examples of such programs include the Chambers Creek winter steelhead program in Washington and the Skamania summer steelhead program, which has been applied more broadly – including in the Great Lakes.

An integrated hatchery program is one in which all or a high proportion of wild steelhead are collected and incorporated into the broodstock. Wild steelhead are included to help maintain genetic similarity between wild and hatchery fish. Anglers often refer to these as “wild broodstock” programs. Examples are numerous, including many winter steelhead programs in Oregon and the Mad River winter steelhead program in California.

While the goal of each type of hatchery program is to produce adult steelhead, they often have different objectives. For instance, segregated programs almost solely produce steelhead for fisheries and harvest rather than for conservation. Integrated programs produce fish for either harvest, conservation or sometimes both. Regardless of the purpose, a hatchery program can be classified according to the type of broodstock they collect: all hatchery, all wild, or some combination thereof.

Discussing the terminology of hatcheries is non-controversial. Discussing the impacts of hatcheries, and how significant these impacts are – not so much. What these impacts boil down to is changes in a steelhead’s fitness due to being reared in a hatchery environment. Fitness in this sense does not refer to a fish’s physical condition. Rather, it is a measure of the individual’s ability to survive and produce offspring that return to spawn. In biological terms, fitness is defined as the sum of survival at all the different life stages of a steelhead – fry-to-parr, parr-to-smolt and so on.

Fitness can be influenced by several factors but effects on steelhead fitness are generally delineated into two groups: environmental and genetic. However, such effects almost always include a combination of the two.

Environmental factors are those changes that occur during hatchery rearing that are reversible. For example, hatchery steelhead smolts may have reduced sensitivity in their lateral lines due to water chemistry in hatchery water supplies. However, this characteristic does not appear to be passed along to their offspring. It was just a product of being reared in a different environment.

On the other hand, genetic differences are not easily reversible — and sometimes are irreversible — because they are partly heritable. For instance, hatchery steelhead may display differences in growth rates, which are partly based on genetic traits. Those traits can be passed on to offspring, resulting in genetic differences between hatchery and wild fish, which helps explain why recent research found that over 700 genes were expressed differently in wild steelhead which had been reared in hatchery environments.

In summary, some of the changes that fish undergo in hatcheries can be reversed, while others may be passed along to their offspring. It is the latter that probably has the strongest influence on the success of hatchery fish spawning in nature.

While Wild Steelheaders United does have a position on hatcheries, the purpose of our Science Friday posts is simply to share scientific information without opinion, so that steelhead anglers can be well informed. If we want to have abundant wild steelhead runs and fishing opportunities in the future, anglers must get engaged in key steelhead issues and processes, and a good understanding of steelhead science and management is vital for such engagement. So please, get informed and get involved – Our Science Friday posts are a good place to start.

To outsmart any quarry, you must first understand it, and steelhead are arguably one of the least understood, and thus elusive, species out there.

However, today we present to you a killer article written by Alaska West alum, and TU’s Wild Steelhead Initiative Organizer, Nick Chambers, on the biology of steelhead and how it relates to, well, catching more steelhead!

If you’re like us, and love fishing for steelhead, do yourself a favor, read the article below, and become a better steelheader today.

Steelhead Biology for Anglers

One thing you will notice about anglers who have spent a lot of time on the water, and I mean a potentially unhealthy amount of time on the water, is they catch fish. This can be frustrating to new anglers who are just learning to steelhead fish and spend many fishless days casting.

There is no substitute for time on the water, but understanding the biology of steelhead can certainly make us better anglers. There are two basic biological principles underpinning all of the mumbo jumbo steelheaders spew about catching fish in various weather and river conditions.

Vision. If a steelhead cannot see your fly or lure it is not likely to bite it, despite having a variety of finely tuned senses, steelhead are primarily visual predators. Visibility can be obscured by a number of things but the most common is turbidity resulting from high stream flows caused by snowmelt or rain. High flows mobilize sediment, which turns rivers various shades of gray and brown. In general, 2-3’ of visibility is considered adequate for steelheading, but many of us have caught fish with less visibility, probably because we managed to get the fly/lure right in front of it. This highlights that during periods of poor visibility it is most important to maintain the offering in “the fish zone” for as long as possible, which means slowing down the presentation and being methodical. As visibility improves fish will move much further to strike a fly or lure and it is less critical to hit them in the face.

Metabolism. Steelhead are ecotherms and as such their body temperature is regulated by their watery environment. In cold water a steelhead’s metabolism is slower and therefore it will not move as far to grab and will generally strike in a less aggressive manner. The same is true when water temperatures become too warm and the fish become lethargic. Traditional wisdom tells us that low and clear conditions make steelhead fishing tough, but in reality it may not be the stream flows as much as it is the water temperatures. For instance, streams tend to get low in winter when it is cold and low in summer when it is warm. In either case the water temperatures are at their lower or upper extremes, meaning that fish are also at their metabolic extremes and consequently, are less responsive to an angler’s offerings. A fine example of this is during late summer and early fall when stream flows are low but temperatures often fall within the wheel-house of maximum activity for steelhead (50-65°F) and they are highly aggressive. Basically this means that we can’t consider stream flows without considering water temperature because it is the latter that is truly driving the metabolism of steelhead.

There are several other factors, often correlated with the visibility and water temperature, that also influence the aggressiveness of steelhead. Each of those factors may provide an angler with a bit more information about how and when to fish for steelhead.

The first is weather. Many anglers have a ritual of checking all of their weather and surf forecast and stream flow websites prior to their trip. While all that information will tell an angler how to dress for their upcoming trip, weather is a secondary factor and the effects of variable weather is underpinned by visibility and temperature. For instance, winter storms are generally warm and full of moisture, which tends to increase water temperatures. This warming trend will increase a fish’s metabolic rate and fishing can be at its best if the warming temperatures are coupled with a reduction in visibility to the point where fish feel safe but can also easily see the fly or lure. Think about the old adage, “three feet of vis and dropping and clearing”. We can assume that a storm has brought in warm rain which has raised the level of the river as well as warming the water. The storm may have brought in new fish but there are also plenty of fish mixed in that were unwilling to bite just a few days prior when the water temps were significantly lower.

The opposite is true in summer. Rain storms tend to decrease air and water temperatures. If the streams were too warm the reduction in temperature can improve the metabolic ability of steelhead. And as with winter, the challenge is finding the proper balance between water temperature, stream flow and visibility.

The second is cloud cover, a symptom of the weather, and shade. As all steelheaders know, fishing tends to be best on those gray muggy days when there is little variation in temperature from morning to evening. Similarly, steelheaders often seek out shaded runs during sunny days, presumably because prolonged periods of high sun tend to force steelhead down to the stream bottoms where they will hold until evening and morning. This means that being successful during the middle of hot summer days requires looking for and identifying shaded areas where steelhead feel more comfortable holding and being active. Regardless of the season, maximizing success depends not only on visibility, water temperature and weather, but also being very specific about reading the water to find those micro-habitats where steelhead are most likely to be aggressive.

Third, many anglers pay attention to barometric pressure and it is commonly felt that a falling barometer is a poor time to fish while rising pressure is ideal. Fish can sense pressure using their air filled swim bladders, however water is denser than air which means that a fish moving up or down three feet in the water column will be exposed to a much greater change in pressure than from an approaching storm. Hence, migratory fish coming in from the ocean and moving up through shallow riffles and pools would experience relatively large changes in pressure, greater than we would typically expect them to notice when the atmospheric pressure changes. This means that barometric pressure is a bit of a red herring for anglers. The fish are most likely responding to other cues such as rainfall and changing temperatures rather than specific changes in barometric pressure.

Lastly, and perhaps the titan of all factors influencing steelhead success is fishing pressure. Hundreds to thousands of anglers are fishing many of our best steelhead rivers in the lower-48. That means a tremendous amount of fish are hooked and landed or lost, and that fish are seeing multitudes of different flies, lures and baits over the course of a season.

Pressured fish are less likely to bite regardless of conditions. Period. Whether it is a fish that has been hooked and played or simply reacting to dozens of boats going overhead, large numbers of anglers generally spook fish. This sends them in to hiding and makes them less aggressive. Why? Well we are not exactly sure of the specific causes, but it is likely related to stress. Steelhead and humans share the same stress hormone known as cortisol. Once this is released into our bodies it must be metabolized and it does not dissipate immediately once a threat is gone. On heavily pressured rivers then, steelhead could be responding to the threats with elevated cortisol levels. While this hormone helps them, and us, survive by causing cautious behavior and even hiding, it makes fishing for them that much more challenging. Steelheaders get up early for one main reason, to get first water so they are not fishing over stressed fish, and another reason that the internet chat boards have chastised any and all anglers to keep a zipper on it when mentioning specific places that are less fished.

Ultimately, when thinking about fishing for steelhead we need to think like a steelhead and understand the reasons for their behavior. This typically boils down to considering two major factors, can a fish see your presentation and it is active enough to move and take it. As we covered here, there are many factors that play into this but they all likely depend on the basic biological needs of steelhead.

Of course, there are other factors we did not discuss that can mitigate certain conditions, such as speed and depth of the presentation, color and size of the fly or lure, and what parts of the river to focus on during different types of conditions. Regardless, don’t get too caught up in all the talk, the most important thing is to get out and spend time on the water. There is no golden rule for steelheading except that being on the water and actually wetting the line is necessary to catch a fish. We have all likely caught steelhead in less than optimal conditions, but we also know that our most glorious successes tend to come when there is a magical confluence of appropriate visibility, perfect water temperatures, fewer anglers and ideal weather conditions. However some of the most memorable fishing days occur during times we did not expect the fishing to be very good at all, so most importantly, just go fishing.

Today, 70 percent of the major steelhead populations in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and California require federal protection and opportunities to catch wild steelhead have diminished dramatically in many rivers.

Trout Unlimited’s Wild Steelhead Initiative and associated group, Wild Steelheaders United, is a new, organized way for anglers (regardless of whether a person fishes gear or fly, bait or lure) to become more informed about wild steelhead biology and ecology, keep abreast of the latest management and policy issues, to learn about wild steelhead fishing opportunities, and to become educated about Trout Unlimited’s conservation work. Above all, it is a home to anyone who believes in the quest to protect these fish. Sign up for free to learn more about wild steelhead, the challenges they face and for opportunities to get involved.

We love organizations dedicated to protecting our beloved fisheries, and one of our favorite conservation organizations, Trout Unlimited, is about to kick off an exciting new project that we thought you should know about.

Tomorrow, Trout Unlimited will be launching its Wild Steelhead Initiative, a project dedicated towards restoring wild steelhead throughout their native range. To kick off the project, TU will be hosting five simultaneous events throughout five states home to native steelhead. If you love wild steelhead as much as we do, click the link above to see how you can get involved!

Most fly anglers today would agree that catch and release practices are important in promoting healthy fisheries. Not only is it beneficial to the well being of our sport, but having the opportunity to release a fish back to the wild to fight another day, is an event most of us would agree adds to the experience.

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that not all fish that are released survive the episode of being caught. The stress associated with being caught and handled kills more fish than most anglers realize. Odds are you are well aware of this fact, but in case you were not, we’re glad you decided to stop by! Simply releasing a fish back into the water does not guarantee the survival of the fish, it is the steps taken prior to the release that makes all the difference.

We recently received a summary of a new report released by Trout Unlimited on handling stress and the effects on fish from catch and release fishing. We weren’t surprised to read that the two factors that contribute most to fish mortality when caught were angling duration (the amount of time a fish is played before being released) and air exposure (the amount of time the fish is out of the water), and hopefully you aren’t either. However, we did find some of their findings extremely interesting, and think you will too. For example..

15-20 Seconds. According to the report, a fish should never be out of the water longer than 15-20 seconds. After this length of time, the survival rate of released fish drops fast. In fact, one study found that rainbow trout had an 88% survival rate when exercised to simulate being caught. However, once exposed to air for 30 seconds, the survival rate dropped to only 62%! So, once you’ve landed your fish and removed the fly (in the water of course), make sure everything is ready to go before hoisting him out of the water for a photo. Aim for one big lift for that hero shot (closer to the water is better), before putting him right back in the water.

Long Fights Mean High Stress. The amount of time the fish is played is one of the largest contributing factors of stress on a fish. According to the report, some studies have shown that up to 89% of fish played to exhaustion die after being released. You don’t have to be a statistician to know that’s not good. Use as heavy gear you can get away with (within reason of course), and put the steam on! You may be surprised you’ll land more fish by doing so!

Learn to Remove Hooks. The report also mentioned that some studies found that more fish were harmed by novice anglers, due to a longer time required to remove hooks. This shouldn’t be discouraging to any novice anglers out there.. Practice makes perfect! However, if you think you might be in this category, try this exercise. Take an orange (or similar fruit) and stick the hook point of a fly into the peel. Grab the hook with your forceps, and rotate your wrist in the opposite direction of the hook bend. Practice until you are comfortable removing hooks quickly and safely.

In summary of the report, the good folks of TU offered some ‘common sense’ guidelines that every angler should abide by in order to minimize stress to the fish. Be a responsible angler and follow suit!

Minimize angling duration (the time a fish is played and handled for hook removal).

Minimize air exposure by removing hooks with the fish in water and photographing fish quickly.

You’ve read here before that we’re big supporters of Trout Unlimited and their program to Save Bristol Bay from the risks associated with the Pebble Mine.

Today we’re helping to get the word out on the Save Bristol Bay Road Show that’s taking place over the next couple of weeks. In Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Corvallis and Santa Fe, you can join TU for some information about Pebble and what you can do to help. Oh yeah, there will also be a Red Gold showing, gear giveaways, food, drink, and lots of good people.

If you’re anywhere near any of those locations, we think you should come on out and support the cause.

Today we’re passing on some conservation news from our friends at the Henry’s Fork Foundation – dedicated to the conservation, restoration, and protection of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River and its watershed.

“The Henry’s Fork Foundation (HFF) is seeking an Executive Director (ED) to continue the conservation leadership and on-the-ground success enjoyed by the foundation for more than 25 years. This leader will continue to grow and evolve the role of HFF as the “voice of the river” and the sole organization committed to protecting the irreplaceable resources of the Henry’s Fork watershed. The ED is accountable for establishing an imaginative watershed vision and providing decisive direction and results to achieve that vision. The successful candidate must possess demonstrated organizational leadership, honed communications skills, collaboration expertise, fund-raising and membership growth success, along with passion for river conservation. A minimum of five years of management experience is also required, with preference given to conservation management.

Qualified candidates should contact the HFF search committee at henryforkeds@hotmail.com to receive a full job description for the ED role, and visit the Henry’s Fork Foundation website at henrysfork.org to learn more about the work of the HFF.”

If you know of someone who might be qualified, please pass the information on!

We all know that farmed fish wind up escaping into the wild. We’re more than a little freaked out about genetically modified salmon being farmed in any piece of water connected to…well, any other piece of water. Aren’t invasive Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Northwest bad enough?

Trout Unlimited is leading an effort to let the FDA know that they need to conduct an analysis of the impact of genetically modified salmon before they just go ahead and let the dogs out.

To quote Chris Wood, TU Head Honcho,

“The FDA is close to approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption. This decision could be disastrous for wild salmon in the U.S. and around the world. We simply can’t let it happen.

If genetically engineered salmon are produced on a commercial scale, fisheries experts say they would inevitably escape into the wild. And if that occurs, it could cause catastrophic damage to the last remaining stocks of wild salmon. We do not question the FDA’s ability to determine potential impacts to humans from eating genetically engineered fish, but they do not have the expertise to evaluate potential impacts on wild salmon. “

What You Can Do

This one’s really easy. Click this link and fill out the form, which will send an email to the FDA letting them know that some analysis is in order.

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Deneki Outdoors operates fishing lodges in Alaska, The Bahamas, British Columbia, and Chile.

Our blog gives anglers a daily dose of life on the water. We combine fishing reports, tips, gear reviews, information about our operations and special guest posts with pictures and stories, all related to our fisheries and beyond.

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